


And I'll Walk Back to You

by UnluckyAmulet



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M, Fanfiction, God help me I love this man, Literature, Maybe I should add smut??, Mild Angst, Reader is sassy as hell, Reader-Insert, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9618392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnluckyAmulet/pseuds/UnluckyAmulet
Summary: They say absense makes the heart grow fonder. You hadn't believed it to be true until now.





	

At first, you didn't think anything of it when Logan left.

After all, he came and went from the mansion all the time. He was like a stray that, while not quite tamed, demanded both a certain amount of freedom and the option to return should he so choose to do so. And Professor X, ever accommodating, granted him both of these things, and it seemed that in exchange he had his own missions for Logan himself.

So watching him swaggering out of the mansion (yes, swagger...you supposed if you were a nigh-invulnerable killing machine, you'd swagger when you walked too), you knew he'd come back eventually, probably on the back of a stolen vehicle of some sort.

What you weren't expecting was how much you were going to miss him.

Perhaps that only made it more painful, the shock of it, like it had snuck up on you when you weren't looking. But there was definitely emptiness, an absence, that settled upon the place when Logan was gone. The funny thing was, it wasn't like you two were best friends. Oh, you didn't actively fight with him like the eternal antagonism between Logan and Scott. But Logan saying something obnoxious and you rolling your eyes and snarking back at him seemed to be a part of your daily routine. Really, everything he did seemed to laughably cliché, the whole bad boy routine. He'd be there one moment, flirting with Jean, growling at Scott and generally slouching around, acting all aloof, and then he'd be gone. Naturally, the students were a little in awe of him and his sporadic returns were heralded with a lot of excitement. You'd shake your head, smirk and ask Logan if he'd discovered the joys of bathing yet, and he'd snort and call you a brat. (Given his vocabulary, you often wondered if the nickname was to refrain from cussing around the kids, or if it was his genuine pet name for you.) It didn't matter how long he'd been away or where he'd been, the routine was so familiar to all of you that you slipped back into it seamlessly.

Perhaps that's what brought him back every time, despite his antisocial ways. Somewhere he knew.

~

"Are you sure you can walk?"

"I'm fine," you gritted out, but damned if you weren't going to pull your weight.

Storm frowned, but she didn't push it.

The mission hadn't gone as well as any of you had planned, but that's what happens when something that's supposed to be covert mission turns into some kind of fucking action game. Needless to say, you just wanted to go home and lie down for several hours. Unfortunately, you'd probably have to get yourself checked out tomorrow, because running away from several armed guards long enough to distracted them while Jean and Scott bust out the handful of mutants held prisoner at the facility never comes without a little pain. The cuts on your body weren't that deep, but they still stung like a bitch, especially one just a little above your hipbone that made your side flare with pain every time you took a step. 

You almost melted into the seat of the jet with a groan of exhaustion, and despite the shaky take-off and volume of the roaring engine, you still shut your eyes and felt yourself drifting off in thought, even as Jean, Scott and Storm pondered amongst themselves about how they were going to explain what happened to the Professor. True, at least you'd gotten the mutants out, if not exactly the way you were originally supposed to. Yet as you sat there, feeling blood seeping into the fabric of your suit and the voices around you chattering, all you could think was, 

_This wouldn't have happened if Logan was there._

~

"So will this scar?" you asked Jean, wincing as you sat up, the cut on your side still sore even with the anesthetic.

"Not if you take proper care of it," Jean replied, in a lightly chiding voice, well aware of your habits of ignoring your own injuries when sufficiently distracted. "We'll check up on it in a little while when the stitches are ready to be taken out. Get some sleep, all right? You need to rest up if you really do want to heal."

"Thanks Jean," you replied, sliding off the table and stretching your arms out as far as you could, relishing the pop your shoulders made. "Sorry to keep you up. You head to bed too soon, okay?"

"Will do," she smiled at you, removing her latex gloves and lifting up her table-full of surgical tools.

Leaving her to it, you left the infirmary feeling, if not better than at least a little lighter. Probably something to do with whatever glorious pain-numbing drugs that happened to be in your system at the moment. A wry smile pulled at your lips, though you could already feel your eyes closing of their own accord. Jean was right, you needed to sleep and try to forget about how near you'd gotten to getting something much worse than a couple of stitches. You let your feet carry you upstairs, trying to keep it quiet lest you wake up any of the kids and have to think up reasons you were wandering dazedly around at night. (Sure, you were older but they were goddamn nosy when they wanted to be.) Nudging open the door, you padded into your room and sorta threw yourself onto the bed, without even bothering to get undressed.

It wasn't until your sleep-deprived brain noted that your room smelled different that you started to realise something was amiss. And no, different didn't really mean 'bad', just...it sort of reminded you of being outside, a sort of woodsy, smoky scent that-

You sat bolt upright.

Oh god.

You were in Logan's room.

_On his bed._

You jumped up like you’d been electrocuted; standing beside the bed with your heart pounding so hard in your chest it was almost painful. Which was a complete and utter overreaction on your part – Logan was hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. It’s not like he was ever going to find out about this, and even if he did, so what? All you did was accidentally walk into his room instead of your own. You were on heavy medication, so it wasn’t like it was really your fault, and…and…

And you didn’t even sound convincing to yourself, even if it was true.

Despite your frantically beating heart and flushed face, you calmed down enough to take in the room, looking around in the unnerving stillness. It seemed so empty without him, even though he rarely spent much time in here anyway, only to sleep every now and then. Lord knows he never took a damn shower in this mansion, not once. Yet there was something unsettling about how utterly still and calm it was, like it could just be anybody’s room. 

Almost as if to prove this unpalatable thought wrong, you got up and marched to the closet and yanked it open. There wasn’t much in the way of possessions, but the shirts hanging there were unmistakably his. Before you could stop and ponder the rationality of your actions, you reached out and yanked one off the hangar, then promptly shut the door and hurried out of the room, face ablaze. Ridiculous. You’d be doodling Logan’s name inside hearts soon if you didn’t get a grip. You climbed into your own bed and buried under the covers as if to hide from your own crazy actions.

Still, you didn't return the shirt.

~

And just when you thought you’d gotten a handle on these stupid, blindsiding, confusing feelings…

_He came back._

It was like you’d accidentally summoned him by your constant thinking about him, both idly during the way and when he starred in some very interesting dreams at night. You only hoped to god that neither the Professor nor Jean had ever tried reading your mind while you slept or you would absolutely _die_ of mortification.

That morning you woke up to excited chattering going on downstairs, and despite how warm and comfy your bed was, natural curiosity won out in the end and you hauled yourself up with a groan, making a valiant attempt to tackle your truly impressive bed-head before going to investigate.

You approached the landing, sighing and dragging your fingers through your hair, and looked over the wooden bannister…

And damn, he looked _good_. Worn leather jacket, white vest shirt that honestly was doing a poor job concealing his goddamn delicious chest, his dark hair was all windswept-looking (evidently he’d found himself a motorbike for his grand entrance). He was smirking as he said something to Jean, who had her arms folded over her chest and was shaking her head at him.

The floorboards beneath you must have creaked, or maybe he felt your eyes on him, because Logan suddenly looked up at you and _fuck_ , you’d forgotten those eyes, not really green but not brown either, but somewhere inbetween. 

You didn’t say anything. 

You couldn’t. Your heart was in your throat and it was like a fist was squeezing all the air out of your chest.

“Hey, brat.” Logan smirked.

Finally, you spoke.

“Logan.” 

But it wasn’t what you wanted to say at all.

~

So here’s the thing.

You were kind of awful at dealing with sudden, unexpected feelings. The team knew this about you, but even they underestimated just how fantastically emotionally stunted you could be. 

It was so simple before, and now it wasn’t. Logan was back, just like you knew he would be eventually and even though you knew your lines, suddenly you had the wrong part in the script. You had no idea what to say to him now that you realised that he wasn’t just a teammate, he was…something else. Something more.

Which was absurd. Obviously. Logan had never…well, okay, sometimes he said pervy things in your general direction, but it seemed like he always had some hot woman or another checking him out, then there was his whole thing with Jean and…you didn’t even want to go near that particular topic. So this whole thing was weird and kind of embarrassing because, what, were you going to charm Logan with your acute sense of sarcasm? Right.

So you just started avoiding him. You were pretty sure that this was the complete inverse of what normal, emotionally healthy people did – avoided the one person that they desperately wanted to be near, such a bad urge that it bordered on a craving, but…  
But you just couldn’t deal with how you felt. 

He noticed, of course.

Of course he did.

For all his rebellious, I-do-what-I-want attitude, it was easy to forget that Logan had been around for quite some time, and people who have lived as long as he had knew a hell of a lot, and they understood how people worked. He was a damn sight smarter than people gave him credit for. So when you suddenly started vanishing from rooms when he entered them, and didn’t seem able to look him in the face, much less string together a sentence, it didn’t really take him long to decide to do something about it.

So when you headed up to your room one evening to get changed, you were humming some TV show theme song under your breath that had been stuck in your head all day and definitely not expecting company of any kind. You had only just entered the room, flung your bag in the vague direction of your bed and closed the door behind you when a deep voice made you damn near jump out of your skin; 

“So what the hell’s your problem?”

You spun around, your heart going from zero to sixty in about three seconds.

Logan was leaning against the wall, his muscular arms folded over his chest. You felt a burst of relief that you’d closed the door for this, and yet there was also a swarm of butterflies that had suddenly taken wing in the pit of your stomach.

“The hell- what are you doing in my room?!” you blurted out, possibly the most you’d spoken to him in weeks.

“Didn’t have a choice, brat.” He replied, in an even tone that made you far more nervous than if he’d been yelling. “You’ve been avoiding me every damn chance you get.”

“No I haven’t,” you said, so flustered at his presence, so aware of the growing tension in the room that you honestly couldn’t think of anything better to say than just to flat-out deny any accusation he threw at you.

He closed the distance between you so fast it was like he’d teleported – first he was across the room, and then he was standing right in front of you.

Sweet jesus.

“Don’t you lie to me,” Logan growled, his voice rumbling in his chest and oh my god, did he know what he was doing to you? His fingers gripped your chin, tilting your face up so you couldn’t avoid those smoldering eyes.

“Back off, Logan.” You grunted, still unable to quite meet his gaze.

“Not until you tell me why,” he replied, and yeah, this was just typical Logan – one stubborn son of a bitch. 

“I just…” you muttered, wishing he’d stop looking at you like that, like you’d done something terrible.

“Just _what?_ ” he pressed.

Oh, fuck it.

“I just missed you, okay?!” you snapped at him, batting his hand off your face and now you were glaring up at him, angry at him for making you say it and angry at yourself for many reasons. 

Logan’s brows furrowed, but he didn’t seem quite so pissed off anymore, which could only be a good thing (even if he looked damn sexy when he was mad).

“You did, huh?” he said, and it was hard to decipher his tone. Normally he might have teased you for saying something like that, but…

“Yes.” You said, sighing and closing your eyes for a moment. “I know that sounds fucking stupid, but it’s true. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Where you were, if you’d be back, what you were doing while you were gone. And now you’re here and it’s nice and all but you’ll be gone soon, so what’s the point?”

You paused. You hadn’t meant to say that last part, because you didn’t know you’d been thinking it, but when the words left your mouth you realised that they were true. God, did you have to be so damn cliché? And wasn’t “pushing people you care about away lest they get hurt” Logan’s bit? And maybe he was thinking something similar because he was standing there, looking at you with his head slightly tilted like he found you curious. A half-smile quirked at his lip.

“Is that why my bed smells like you?”

Oh lord.

“Um. What?” You said, trying and failing to sound casually interested.

“My bed,” Logan repeated, and now he was smirking, leaning in close and you bit your lip as you stared at the rise and fall of his chest. “When I got back, I could smell you all over my pillow.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you lied, despite the bright red flush crawling up your neck. It was like he’d just read your diary. “Maybe you were so tired the night you came back you just hallucinated.”

“Hallucinated, my ass,” he snorted.

“Fine! Okay, so I went in your room, but it was a total mistake- no, shut up, you asshole, it was!” you said, indignation bleeding into your tone as Logan levelled you with a decidedly skeptical stare. “Jean gave me some stuff when she did my stitches so I must have overshot and-“

“You got stitches?” Logan interrupted, his previous amusement fading a little as he looked you up and down, his posture suddenly alert. “When?”

“What? Oh, just a thing that happened on a mission, it’s no big- _LOGAN!_ ” 

Your rambling explanation was cut short as Logan, like he did it all the time and it was in no way weird or inappropriate (not like he’d give a damn if it was, though), reached and lifted up your T-shirt, exposing the now mostly-healed wound in your side. You didn’t know how he knew that’s where the injury was, but again, you don’t live to be over two hundred years old without learning a thing or two.

“Hey!” you squeaked, making an attempt at swatting his hand away, but he didn’t budge. In fact, he used his free one to gently trace the edge of the skin, though it was healing very well thanks to Jean. 

You couldn’t repress an involuntary shiver as his calloused fingers touched the soft skin of your side. Something about him touching you like this, so casually and yet strangely intimately, gave you a strange hot, crawly feeling down your spine.

“Fuck, why didn’t you say something?” Logan demanded, after a moment, though you could see concern in those accursedly gorgeous eyes. “Does it hurt?”

“Not that much. Not anymore.” You replied, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. 

You knew that you should be objecting more to Logan moving your clothing and touching a still-healing injury, but you were losing the will to maintain your dignity anymore. Instead you looked at Logan quietly, taking in his presence, how very real and solid he was in this moment. Though you knew it would probably take the apocalypse to really cause him any significant injury, you felt so much better knowing he was here, where it was safe, even if it was only for a little while. You opened your mouth to say something, because the silence was getting to be too much, but the breath stalled in your throat when Logan suddenly moved forwards, his hand cupping the back of your head and-

_Oh._

His lips were warm against yours, and though his sideburns were scratching your cheeks, you didn’t really care because _Logan was fucking kissing you._ And oh, but you’d wanted to do this for what seemed like so long it didn’t occur to you to be shocked or protest. You melted, plain and simple, into him, wrapping your arms around his neck, leaning inwards, almost on tiptoe. His hands slid around your waist, pulling you to him, almost squeezing the air from you. He tasted like smoke and some kind of hard liquor and heat and it was so good, so real, that you could have wept from it. Or maybe you were just really affection starved, tough to say. He nipped your bottom lip, teasing, marking you up, but you could feel his heartbeat as you were pressed against his chest and it was going about as fast as yours. You smirked inwardly that you could make him feel like this too, even if he was just being impulsive. You didn’t care to analyse _why_ right now.

Eventually you had to break apart for air and maybe a little room, but Logan didn’t move his arms from around you (one hand was inching a little lower by the second) and so you didn’t move either, just rested your head on his shoulder, fully leaning your weight on him and he stood perfectly still, breathing in the scent of your hair and feeling your fingers tracing a meaningless pattern on his back. A contented silence settled over the room like a blanket of snow.

“Logan?” you said, a little breathlessly, after what felt like an eternity.

You could hear the smirk in his voice, even without looking at him.

“Mm-hmm?”

You smiled and shut your eyes.

“Welcome home.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm Amulet and I have a huge ladyboner on Wolverine. I cannot be stopped. My first time writing the boi, so I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
